• Do not mention that you bought spring, winter and fall houses in addition to last year's purchase of the summer house.

• The school did not have to buy more plaques and trophies for your kids.

• If your business was the only one to profit in this economy, don't tell a soul and send some of those profits to charities.

• Do send us stories about the funniest things that happened to your family last year and let us imagine that your year was truly wonderful and that next year will be as well.

— Marilyn Kosin, La Grange Park

City gems

We spent a recent weekend in Chicago celebrating a birthday and enjoying our favorite city. It was crowded and noisy, and we had to wait in many lines, but everyone we met was polite and helpful.

CTA bus drivers, security guards, waiters, shop clerks and the police helped make this a special weekend. A must for us every time we are in the city is a visit to the Art Institute, where there is always something new to view. The city was hectic with thousands of shoppers, but we managed to find a quiet refuge at the Newberry Library and Loyola University Museum of Art. The Newberry's marbled papers and fine bookbinding exhibit was exquisite, while the creche exhibit with more than 100 different nativity sets at LUMA helped us focus on the real meaning of this sometimes-too-busy season.

Gems like the Newberry and LUMA are reasons we love Chicago and keep coming back.

— Mike and Nancy Hill, St. Charles

In a class by himself

As a longtime resident of the Chicago area and baseball fan, transplanted here from Ohio 36 years ago, I feel the need to comment on Ron Santo's passing.

Santo was the Cubs third baseman; he averaged .277 with 342 home runs, 1,331 RBIs and five gold gloves. Santo was the heart and soul of an excellent 1969 Cubs team and face of the Cubs throughout a 21-year broadcast career. During his storied career, Santo experienced a constant fight with diabetes, including two leg amputations, with courage and a wry sense of humor while devoting many volunteer years to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

Despite all of this, in a small and petty manner, baseball refused to allow Santo's election to the Hall of Fame.

All I can say is that what Major League Baseball lacked in class, Ron Santo had in abundance.

Here's to you Ron.

— Ken Kramer, Glen Ellyn

Comforting Santo

While I, like most Cubs fans, was aware that Ron Santo's health had been tenuous at times over the past several years, his passing is still hard to accept. It's difficult in part because of the youthful exuberance he exuded on virtually every single broadcast, even during this latest dismal season. It was deceiving. He never sounded weak or frail or lackluster, despite how he may have been feeling, because, I believe, he truly loved his occupation.

He never gave up on the Cubs. Despite the number of road trips he might have missed for health reasons toward the end of a particular season, it was a given that he'd be back in the spring.

Certainly Cubs fans have divergent memories of Ron Santo depending on their age. For the older generations, it's probably his playing career that predominates: the superstitious, hot-headed, heel-clicking Santo who was a perennial All-Star, played a Gold Glove third base, hit for power. For some, those memories have given way in part to the more lovable Santo of recent radio vintage. Younger Cubs fans probably only know "radio Ron," and his relate-able, emotional, every-fan persona as a color commentator, his work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, his struggle to gain entry to the Hall of Fame despite a worthy career and his undying loyalty to the Cubs.

As for me, I'll remember the countless spring, summer and fall afternoons and evenings behind the wheel of the various cars I've driven since I graduated from high school and left home. I'll remember the first few weeks after I transferred to a new university a state away, how my surroundings were still so alien and unknown, and how I would climb into my beat-up Chevy and drive around the outskirts of town just to pick up the staticky WGN signal and hear those familiar voices chronicling the Cubs' wild card playoff run and the compelling, if now infamous, Sosa-McGwire subplot.

It was the same as I adjusted to a new and demanding career, and all those jaunts around the collar counties for evening meetings, suffocating in a suit and tie, my nerves easing and tolerating the traffic just a little better as Ron clumsily conducted his usual pre-game interview of the "fine manager" of the Chicago Cubs.